Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Vietnam bans unskippable ads

saigoneer.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 835 posts

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#101

Post by haritha-j »

al_borland wrote: post #90
iammjm wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world would definitely be better without ads. All ads are poisonous. All of them first convince you that you and your life as it is is not good enough, and that in order to be happy again you need to spend money to buy a $product.

As much as I hate ads, I don’t know that it’s so simple. There are products that do solve legitimate problems people have. Maybe there is less of that now, but in this past this was very true, and advertising helped make people aware that solutions to their problems have been developed. The first washing machine, for example. The problem comes when the advertisement manufacturers problems that didn’t previously exist…

I wonder if there's a middle ground, where you only have statement based, textual ads. Amusing ourselves to Death (great book btw), discusses how until the 19th century, ads were basically just information dense textual statements. The invention of slogans and jingles was the start of the slow downfall in ads.

I interned at an ad agency once, and I really enjoy creative advertising, but frankly there's just way too much advertising in this world.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#102

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

simplicio wrote: post #70
_jab wrote: post #13

I've often wondered whether the world would be better without ads. The incentive to create services (especially in social media) that strive to addict their users feels toxic to society. Often, it feels uncertain whether these services are providing actual value, and I suspect that whether a user would pay for a service in lieu of watching ads is incidentally a good barometer for whether real value is present. Don't…

Maybe, but on the otherside, ads make available a huge amount of media and services to people who would otherwise be unable to afford it. Like, I suspect a non-trivial percentage of people wouldn't have email if it weren't for gmail and other free w/ads services.

Maybe. Or maybe we could fund those services from all the money we'd save without advertising.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#104

Post by owisd »

vladms wrote: post #77
master-lincoln wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it would have been a better world without ads. There would be more competition which would improve products and thus outcome for customers. Also most of the demand of goods is artificially created by ads, so there would be less production of crap and thus less resources wasted. It would also mean a whole industry of people would do something else that is potentially not as detrimental to society. The money sp…

While I agree that the world would be better without ads in their current form, we should think why are ads required and what are the benefits. The main issue is how you discover a new product. The main benefit to society is/could be faster progress. The main downside to society could be unhappy people that consume crap. I think smart people should think about alternative solutions, not just think "ads are the proble…

> how you discover a new product

Buying magazines for trusted 3rd party reviews used to be way more common, far better experience than trying to sift through SEO slop these days.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#105

Post by iso1631 »

iammjm wrote: post #24
_jab wrote: post #13

I've often wondered whether the world would be better without ads. The incentive to create services (especially in social media) that strive to addict their users feels toxic to society. Often, it feels uncertain whether these services are providing actual value, and I suspect that whether a user would pay for a service in lieu of watching ads is incidentally a good barometer for whether real value is present. Don't…

The world would definitely be better without ads. All ads are poisonous. All of them first convince you that you and your life as it is is not good enough, and that in order to be happy again you need to spend money to buy a $product.

Adverts I specifically request are fine. Trailers for example -- I specifically go to youtube to find trailers.

Or I'll go to rightmove if I want to look at adverts for houses. I'm happy to spend both time and even money on seeking out new products.

But it seems that people have a parasitical relationship with adverts, they can't imagine a world where there aren't wall to wall adverts on TV and radio. And in magazines and movies and at ball games and on buses and milk cartons and T-shirts and bananas and written in the sky.

Adverts should be for my benefit, i.e. I can turn them on or off.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#106

Post by sensanaty »

_jab wrote: post #13

I've often wondered whether the world would be better without ads. The incentive to create services (especially in social media) that strive to addict their users feels toxic to society. Often, it feels uncertain whether these services are providing actual value, and I suspect that whether a user would pay for a service in lieu of watching ads is incidentally a good barometer for whether real value is present. Don't…

I mean, infinitely so. I don't give a shit that you (the royal you, not literally you :p) and your business can't find their target demographic without ads, they are psychological manipulation of the worst kind and they should be eradicated from existence with prejudice. There is NO type of advertisement that is okay in my mind, whether it be a 5x5cm image in a black and white newspaper or the ubiquitous cancer that we're inundated with daily on the internet, none of it should exist. Moreover, if your business isn't possible without ads, then good riddance. Maybe at some point in the past I would've been okay with the "innocuous" ones like the newspaper ones, but the advertising industry and the psychotic, soulless ghouls that inhabit it have changed my opinion forever on it.

For every "innocent" and well intentioned ad out there, there are quite literally a billion cancerous ones that rely on pure deception to make the biggest buck out of you. Ads are the driving force behind the cancerous entity that is Meta and all the ills that they've brought upon the world such as actual fucking genocides. The "people" I've had the displeasure of meeting that come from advertising backgrounds have all been soulless psychopaths who would sell their own family for a bit of cash.

I mean just look at the type of shit they come up with in this very thread. It's all just games on how they can circumvent these kinda rules. "Oh you'll force me to let people skip my brainwashing? I'll just put up 20x more ads to make up for it!" Who even talks and thinks like this other than ghouls?

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#107

Post by wolvoleo »

ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #59
_jab wrote: post #13

I've often wondered whether the world would be better without ads. The incentive to create services (especially in social media) that strive to addict their users feels toxic to society. Often, it feels uncertain whether these services are providing actual value, and I suspect that whether a user would pay for a service in lieu of watching ads is incidentally a good barometer for whether real value is present. Don't…

People won't pay a few bucks a month for YouTube. They won't pay to keep their favorite sites online. They won't pay for their news. Without ads, a lot of things wouldn't exist.

No I won't pay for premium because even if I pay for it I still get ads in the content itself.

Fix that and then I'll pay.

Until then I just block the ads and the sponsors.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#108

Post by ksaj »

i_am_jl wrote: post #82
sandworm101 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have fallen asleep watching youtube many times. I swear i have woken up in the middle of 20+ minute ads. I thought it was a news article about china when it was an ad. Who knows when the skip button appeared. The few times i have seen these, it has always been a literal fake news show about china.

I've seen these advertisements too, also only when my phone had been playing unattended for some time. I have a (unsupported, unsubstantiated) theory that YT detects phones of "sleepers" and pushes more profitable content with the understanding it won't be skipped. I've got a few spare phones, maybe I'll run an experiment.

With YT, it might be an account-specific metric. Ie: flagged as a frequent sleeper. This would not surprise me, since they track just about every other metric possible against your account.

You can have multiple YT accounts on a single gmail acct, but I don't think that'll fool them. They know where you initially logged in from. So you will likely need multiple gmail accounts to do this kind of experiment.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#109

Post by iso1631 »

vladms wrote: post #77
master-lincoln wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it would have been a better world without ads. There would be more competition which would improve products and thus outcome for customers. Also most of the demand of goods is artificially created by ads, so there would be less production of crap and thus less resources wasted. It would also mean a whole industry of people would do something else that is potentially not as detrimental to society. The money sp…

While I agree that the world would be better without ads in their current form, we should think why are ads required and what are the benefits. The main issue is how you discover a new product. The main benefit to society is/could be faster progress. The main downside to society could be unhappy people that consume crap. I think smart people should think about alternative solutions, not just think "ads are the proble…

> I personally have the exactly same issues as above when I look for example for open source libraries/programs for a task. There are popular ones, there are obscure ones, they are stable ones, etc. The search space is so big and complex that it is never easy.

And adverts don't help determine what the best tool for your problem is. They determine which product spent the most on adverts.

So yes, adverts do not help you with decision making at all.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#110

Post by austin-cheney »

simplicio wrote: post #81
austin-cheney wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not a great regulatory move, in my opinion. Why?

Think the best argument against it is that it makes advertising less valuable, which in turn limits the how many "paid for with advertising" services will be available and how good those services will be. Especially in a developing country where consumers ability to pay for such things is going to be limited, that will presumably deprive some margin of the population of media/services that are currently ad supported.

I am fine with advertising becoming less valuable. I fully appreciate there is a lot of media I take for granted due to advertising. Yet, ever since I was a small child the goal of advertising was to influence consumer behavior more than selling products or brand identity, which is extremely toxic. Once consumer gullibility wears off the dollars poured into advertising always find a way into political lobbying and policy influence campaigns, which is really just more of the same.
Post reply on HN